The Stillman E-Book

Tom McCulloch

• Herausgeber: Sandstone Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Jim Drever is a man apart. Twenty years a Stillman at a Highland distillery, his closest relationship is with the machinery he monitors, the movies he's obsessed with. It's the worst winter in years and the world is closing in. A strike is looming and his daughter is about to get married. His son's ever-weirder behaviour is becoming a worry and his marriage has disintegrated into savage skirmishes with a wife he barely knows. Then the emails start to arrive from Cuba, sending him letters from his dead mother, and Jim can't stay on the sidelines any longer.

Leseprobe

Tom McCulloch

THE STILLMAN

TOM McCULLOCH

First published in Great Britain by

Sandstone Press Ltd

PO Box 5725

One High Street

Dingwall

Ross-shire

IV15 9WJ

Scotland.

www.sandstonepress.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored or transmitted in any form without the express

written permission of the publisher.

© Tom McCulloch 2013

Editor: Moira Forsyth

The moral right of Tom McCulloch to be recognised as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act, 1988.

The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards publication of this volume.

ISBN: 978-1-908737-67-0

ISBNe: 978-1-908737-68-7

For my family.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

One

It all begins with death, it all ends with death. The crow lies on the low concrete wall outside warehouse 21. The beak is slightly open and bright blood spatters the snow, guts grey and spilling. Siberia’s gale has momentarily dropped to a stabbing breeze. The oily feathers barely move. In an hour or two they’ll be frozen. I bend closer, studying the scene, like a TV detective. There’s no surrounding tracks or marks. Did the crow just fall out of the sky? It must’ve been some height to splatter viscera like that.

I look up. Sky the colour of wet pebbles. The first bird I’ve seen for days and it’s dead. What would it be like to never see any other kind of life-form again? Nothing but people.

The crow’s feathers give an indignant ruffle. No wonder, imagine being gawped at after your suicide leap. Savage, dying insults, that’s what I’d scream at the gathering crowd and their repulsed but fascinated stares. I give the crow its decency and look away. Des is leaning against the big red warehouse door, wearing that greasy fur hat he says he got in the navy.

‘When’s the delivery due?’

‘96 barrels coming in.’

‘I know that, but when?’

Des stares at the snow, as if he’s wondering how long it’s been falling. I can’t remember either, it buries memory as it smothers the landscape. I’ve never known a man to stare like Des. Sometimes he still seems to be up on deck, lost in the ocean, pondering whatever he ponders.

I follow him inside. The high racks of barrels stretch three hundred feet into the darkness. The smell of whisky is strong. Des opens the tea-hut door. We call it the tea-hut but it’s just a small room for taking a break. And I’ve never seen anyone drinking tea. Mostly we sit and mostly in a loaded silence. The barred window is frosted up, accentuating the nearness to each other. I sit on the bench, chin down into my jacket. I move my feet on the gritty floor. The raspy noise cuts into the silence and Malky sniffs. I stop moving my feet.

‘If you farted in here it would freeze in the air. If you were first in the next day you’d walk into a wee smelly cloud. You’d know it was a fart but you’d know it couldn’t have been you, so how did it get there?’

Nobody bothers to reply to Camp Gary. He probably doesn’t want a response anyway. But I know we’re all now thinking about it. Five grown men wondering if it’s possible for a fart to freeze. Times like these I’m glad when I hear the lorry rumbling closer. Then the driver’s face is at the door and he’s calling us a bunch of lazy bastards and he wants the barrels off pronto. I’ve seen this driver before, the one with the wraparound shades, who sits in his cab dreaming he’s an Apache helicopter pilot, swooping low over the Tora Bora.